Bad Moods And Church

I’m starting to hope I get a chance to apologize for yesterday. Have you ever had one of those days when you were just in a bad mood, and then thrust into a situation which you would have been neutral toward on a normal day, but because of the mood, it was amplified? That was me yesterday.

My church had a “halftime” celebration for our expansion project. Our 1950’s building is bursting at the seams and is several hundred amps short on electricity needed for our modern requirements, so we launched upon a journey “of faith” to expand. We found a 7 acre plot of orchard property and bought it. Then we paid it off in a year. Once that was completed, we set upon the harder road: building on it. The church hired a consultant to help along this road. We had a three month ramp up to the time when the actual campaign would begin. That three months were full of meetings. I remember my wife and I being on the communications committee. We held meetings with the four generations that make up our membership. It’s interesting how each generation sees things. My generation is more interested in how our children will be raised in the church. The teens and young adults, obviously, don’t care about children's programs. The baby boomers and seasoned generations all have a unique perspective, so the meetings were tailored to them. We had prayer meetings and celebrations. This all culminated in a church service at the golf course across the street from our new property.

Yesterday was the halftime celebration. My teeth had been hurting on Saturday, and that made it hard to sleep. I didn’t want to tell my wife because I didn’t want to have the conversation about calling the dentist. Turns out, I should have. In order to save us money and prevent possible harm from processed products, she makes a lot of her own household items, including toothpaste. It turns out that the clove oil in her current recipe is a natural antiseptic, and if I’d only brought up the issue on Saturday, I would have known about the toothpaste and I could have slept Saturday night rather than laying awake in pain. Talk about a “Doh!” moment.

Anyway, when we arrived at the golf course on Sunday morning, I wasn’t in the best of moods, and my teeth were still hurting. The golf course has a tent set up which we use for the celebrations. It was already a hot day. I don’t like heat. I want February back. There was a bar set up with cups of ice but no water in them, and my wife wanted water. Another guy from our church was behind the bar getting water, so I followed suit, only to have some kind of manager show up and start yelling at me for being behind the bar, then claiming that some non-existent employee behind the bar could help me. My friend who was still getting water seemed to have gone unnoticed. I held my tongue, especially considering this was a church event, but that didn’t help and only served to destabilize my mood further.

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about songs in my church. We opened with a song I’m not entirely fond of, but it seems we sing it far too often. I was already cranky. We did sing a couple of songs during the service that I liked, but many others that I think we sing too much and I don’t like enough. The service was divided into four quarters. Both of our ministers, several of our elders, and a few other people spoke on various sports metaphored themes related to our expansion. Readers of my blog know that I’m not a sports fan, and being in a bad mood only made the sports metaphors that much more painful for me to bear. One deacon led people in cheerleader styled chants. Ugh. On top of this, both of my kids suddenly needed bathroom runs at least once every ten minutes for the duration of the event, which required a long walk down a tent hallway into the golf course building. I felt like I lost 10 pounds in walks to the bathroom alone.

Anyway, for the duration of the event, I alternated between having a pained look on my face, posting to Twitter, and reading a John MacArthur book on my Windows Mobile phone. It was hardly the best example I could have set for my children and for others in the church. I’m not sure what was exactly wrong with me. Were I in a good mood, I still would have struggled with some of the songs, and a sermon that listed baseball achievements, but I should have been better behaved. I’d hate to think I was part of some kind of spiritual attack. We’ve already been through plenty the last couple of years as a church. I want to apologize to anyone from church who may read my blog. I did accept that if the church were to gear a service or celebration to my tastes, they would probably lose everybody else, especially my wife.

I do wish, especially when it came to church, I could live an “everything is wonderful and blessed” kind of life, or at least show that kind of demeanor. I can’t. Life is messy whether in church or not in church.